For this album, I gravitated toward compositions where literature, poetry, lyrics, and folklore was the source of inspiration: “The transformation of written words into instrumental music is wildly abstract and totally subjective, and I enjoy this unique look into a composer’s thought process; the results feel so particularly personal, playful, stylized and imaginative. In this collection of pieces, the cello has been transformed into the narrator, the hero, the plot summary, the play on words; a story’s questions, and its answers. The composers represented on this album are some of the most thoughtful and inventive practitioners of their craft. To me, their bodies of work feel particularly vital to contemporary music, and it’s been an honor for me to play their pieces for cello.” – Caitlin Sullivan